


If it’s darkness we’re having, let it be extravagant

by Inaccessible Rail (strangetales)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Darkish-Scott, F/M, Gen, Witch-y AU!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-30
Updated: 2014-07-30
Packaged: 2018-02-11 02:51:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2050752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangetales/pseuds/Inaccessible%20Rail
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When she thought about that day, fuzzy though it was, she could remember Scott’s eyes on her – she had probably been staring longer than appropriate, trying to make sense of the darkness that now hung around his small frame when only days earlier there had been none; <b>a normal boy, a normal girl.</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	If it’s darkness we’re having, let it be extravagant

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is kind of a weird thing I did. I really just wanted a world where Lydia knew about what she was and what she could do, and had grown up surrounded by powerful women, so I wrote it. This turned out to be more of a very early pre-cursor to a relationship between Scott and Lydia, and I’m not sure if I’ll be venturing further into this universe. There are a few allusions to it at some point in the future, though.
> 
> *The fully italicized paragraphs are flash-forwards!*

All night I stretched my arms across  
him, rivers of blood, the dark woods, singing  
with all my skin and bone, ‘Please keep him safe.  
Let him lay his head on my chest and we will be  
like sailors, swimming in the sound of it, dashed  
to pieces.’ Makes a cathedral, him pressing against  
me, his lips at my neck, and yes, I do believe  
his mouth is heaven, his kisses falling over me like stars.

\-- Richard Siken

Somewhere between the ages of 10 and 12, they had sent her into the void alone; a “learn by example” kind of lesson. Up until that point, it hadn’t been unlike any other elementary school, aside from the large dusty tomes on her nightstand, it was all arithmetic and spelling exercises. So when her grandmother had led her upstairs into the attic one morning, she had become immediately suspicious. Even at 10, 11, or 12 (those years are all so _fuzzy_ ) Lydia was the kind of child with an instinctual apprehension of nearly everything around her; people, places, and things. Except the cat; blind Hypatia, the stray that slept at the foot of her bed, loyal until the end.

The attic at 122 Elm Street smelled pervasively of mold and possibly carrion. The floors were made of ancient, hardwood, and you could see the unfinished boards peeking out from in between the ancient Persian rugs that had lost most, if not all of their color years earlier. Aside from a large armoire which sat nestled in a corner towards the back of the room, all of the furniture (if it _was_ all furniture) was covered in heavy yellowed drop-sheets; one of them even had a small mouse hidden in a particularly deep wrinkle.

It had been an overcast, wet day, and when she stood up on her tip-toes to see into the small circular window which faced the street, she could see drops against the distorted glass, big fat ones that acted like a magnifying glass, enlarging the view of what little she could see of the street below. The wind had been blowing hard all morning, an “unforgivable wind,” her aunt had said as she braided Lydia’s hair into two small plaits, smoothing them with her callused hands.

She felt her grandmother’s soft, wrinkled hand pull her away from the window to face the cabinet which towered menacingly over them both. Lydia was immediately reminded of the movie she had seen only a few days earlier, _The Beauty and the Beast_ , how all of the furniture had come loudly to life; and a cabinet much like this one had turned into a tottering, silly old woman, with a kindness that had shown in her exaggerated, wooden dimples. This particular cabinet, however, was made of a deep, dark wood, with strange grooves carved into its sides, and pale, long scratches dug into the insides of the doors.

It was dark inside the cabinet. But a deeper kind of dark, wholly unlike the kind any child would experience in their room at night, where a shirt thrown over the back of a chair in one glance is a monster but in another, is only a chair. The darkness she faced now was more like when you close your eyes in the dark of a theater, or when she had gone down into the cellar a few days earlier to grab a jar of peaches and had shut her eyes against the growling of the furnace; a pure absence of light which could never be penetrated.

“Do not let your fear determine your path,” her grandmother said, the words soft yet firm, as they always were, but there was a slight waver there, an unfamiliar hesitancy. She squeezed Lydia’s hand tightly. “I will be here when you return.”

She would have nightmares even _years_ later pertaining to the infinite, despairing nature of the void. Even in her darkest days as a teenager; Scott’s first kill, Allison’s death, _nothing_ could chill her so completely as her walk through the void had. And she called it “a walk,” it was the easiest way to explain it to people, but it hadn’t been so tangible as all that. It had been as if she were pulled apart and sucked back together repeatedly, with only the desperate whispers of the dead for company.

And it wasn’t just the dead. It was the kind of creatures most children only read about in stories, even their parents would tell them not to worry, “they’re not real.” But 10-11-12 year old Lydia Martin had found out that there _were_ monsters under the bed; and they had teeth.

—

She had known Scott’s fate before he did, but it would be a good long while before she told _him_ that. And it hadn’t been like she hadn’t _wanted_ to – it had been _all_ she wanted in fact, but every time she had worked up the courage to let him in on her secret, lying in bed with Hypatia snuggled comfortably against the backs of knees, there would be a firm knock against her door, and one of her aunts or her grandmother would take a stern step inside and exasperatedly reiterate, “ _Not today, Lydia._ ”

She became quite adept at staring at the back of his head in middle school; watching his feet move excitedly up and down beneath his chair, watch his hand move unconsciously to his coat pocket, feeling for his inhaler in a nervous gesture.

 _You’re going to become a monster._ She had first known shortly after her “walk,” had sensed it when she saw him climbing on the playground with that Stilinski boy; “Made of sticks,” her grandmother had said, “and _no focus_.”

When she thought about that day, fuzzy though it was, she could remember Scott’s eyes on her – she had probably been staring longer than appropriate, trying to make sense of the darkness that now hung around his small frame when only days earlier there had been none; a normal boy, a normal girl. And he hadn’t shouted, or called her names (like some other people in their class), or looked at her funny, like even her aunts did sometimes; like they couldn’t _quite_ figure her out. He had smiled, and the warmth of it had been enough to break through even her muddiest memories.

“I _know_ he smiled at me,” she would whisper to Hypatia late at night, with the wind howling and the rain beating against the fragile panes of her room, “Maybe he’s not a monster after all.”

—

By the time high school began a kind of normalcy had settled around the whole banshee business. Beacon Hills was unusually loud compared to other towns, but as she aged and learned and grew, the voices had become a constant, if not _slightly_ irritating hum, which she had come to compare with the sound of a nest of bees; nearly silent, yet unmistakable. The shadows had gotten less easy to spot as she had gotten older, something to do with not having the “eyes of a child” anymore. She was grateful for it; it was pretty hard to hold a conversation with a cloud of inky blackness hovering distractedly in front of someone’s face.

Looking back, Lydia would come to remember that her ever-present nest of noise and foreboding had become louder in the days before Scott was bitten. She had more trouble focusing, difficulty sleeping, and a more than usual amount of nighttime walks in the woods, coming to on the side of the road, the flesh of her feet burning with small cuts and scrapes.

From the very beginning her grandmother had warned her that her “gift” was not to be used for preventing the future, any glimpses she may perceive of events before they have come to pass, _will_ pass. “There’s nothing to be done, darling,” she had explained, “it is not so much a warning, as it is a piece of a large puzzle that we don’t yet know the image of.”

“Then why even piece it together in the first place?” she had asked, frustrated, thinking of Scott and his smile, and how _he didn’t deserve it_.

“Why, Lydia, don’t you want to _know_?”

She had rolled her eyes and sighed exasperatedly at her grandmother’s typical vagueness and returned to her room to stew in her anticipation of a full moon that was only hours away.

—

His name had been a mere whisper from between the pink sheen of her lips, but she knew that he would hear it regardless, and it would be loud to his ears, like the hard reverberation of a workman’s hammer. “ _Scott._ ”

He had been bent over himself, as if in agony, the full weight of his shoulder resting against the row of lockers, creating a small dent that would mystify some poor freshman in the morning.

“ _Scott_ ,” she said again, her lips barely parting as she spoke. Even though everyone had gone home for the day and the hallway was empty save for each other, she whispered – and even if someone had been nearby, standing _right_ next to her, they wouldn’t have heard his name, reverent and careful. His eyes whipped towards her in surprise, her voice providing a momentary distraction from his fear and pain.

_“I had always **thought** there was something special about you,” he said laughingly, pressing his lips against the top of her suddenly reddening ear._

_“I would hope so,” she replied haughtily, but he caught the shyness of her smile, and only squeezed her tighter._

She blinked, a blush filling her cheeks and turned quickly away, leaving only the sound of her shoes echoing loudly against the tile in her wake.

—

His first kill would be bloody, like a cut of raw meat, the blood leaking and pooling so quickly and so far that no one would be able to escape the spread of it. And she had tried to warn him of it, more than once, against her own knowledge and good sense, had tried to tell him the somewhat fantastical story of an old cabinet that was _still_ in the attic, uncovered – as if it were offended by the mere mention of being covered and hidden away. She wished she _could_ cover it; even after all these years, she couldn’t help but think of it, unlocked and heavy.

“I can control it,” he whispered, adamant, “I _won’t_ hurt anybody.”

“You _can’t_ know that,” she replied desperately, “I would never in a million years believe you capable of hurting _anyone_ , but _you don’t know what I know_.”

He looked at her pleadingly in the silence of the library, their chairs angled towards one another, books scattered in front of them, forgotten. Depths of fear and ignorance shown from his panicked, wide eyes and she felt her heart clench in sympathy. She silently cursed her grandmother, her aunts, and _their_ rules. That had to be all it was, just another rule, maybe one that she could break, _just this once_?

He stood from his chair abruptly, nearly knocking it over in his haste and she leapt backwards, catching an open book in her lap.

“Scott—“

“I have to go,” he interrupted, flashing a quick smile her way, “it’ll be fine. I promise.”

—

She found the body; or what was left of it, a few days later. And she had _wanted_ to find it, had left her studies by the wayside and focused all of her attention on a small, handheld FM radio she had always kept in a cluttered drawer of the nightstand next to her bed, covered in layers of stickers like the rings of a tree.

Ever since Scott had been bitten there had been more voices than usual, and all trying to speak at the same time, it was nearly impossible to find the one she had needed but it was there, quiet yet distinct. It was violent, messy, executed in anger and frustration; no control, no intelligence, just _instinct_.

There was no Scott when she arrived, just a flickering streetlight in the chilly dawn of a Sunday morning. She found a shell casing in the pool of congealing blood with a symbol engraved in its base; an unfamiliar crest but she knew what it meant all the same, had been taught enough to know that Beacon Hills had practically been begging for it with this influx of supernatural beings.

“Hunters,” she sighed wearily, and felt a dull throbbing begin to pound behind her eyes.

—

Regardless of who Scott McCall was, or had been, the wolf would flee to the woods. Standing alone in the middle of the vacant lot she could have sworn she heard it; the heavy breaths of a beast crashing through spindly, dead trees; felt the vibrations of a racing heart.

_She couldn’t pinpoint it exactly, when the beats of his heart had stopped sounding like that of a man or a beast, but had started to pound in the rhythm of both. Maybe after Allison had died in his arms, pleading with him, telling him it was “okay,” even though it wasn’t – it never would be, and even after having killed once, more than once by then, he had never been the same. Maybe it had been when he had sat beneath the towering height of the cabinet at her side, their shoulders brushing meaningfully against each other. They had felt the darkness leaking, winding its way into the dusty attic and he had pressed his warm lips against hers; she felt her neck brace itself with the force of it, and the darkness was forgotten._

The sun had only just barely begun to rise as she made her way into the dewy brush, wincing every time she felt cold water against her bare legs. The woods were eerily quiet; the birds had ceased chirping, and even the insects had fallen silent. The only sounds were that of the wind rustling the darkening leaves and her tentative footsteps, softly crunching against the stiff earth.

“Scott?” she asked quietly, disturbing the silence. A small pair of wings flapped a ways off, echoing in her ears and she spun around to face the emptiness of her own path.

“ _Scott?_ ” she asked again, nearly hissing in desperation. A small part of her grew nervous at the prospect of finding him unchanged, trapped in his violent passions of the previous evening and unable to change himself back. She nervously wrapped her hand around a bunch of dried wolfsbane she had stuffed into the pocket of her dress.

A branch snapped loudly somewhere to her left, and she nodded decidedly before marching bravely towards it, her quick, long strides turning into a run as she felt the distance between them begin to shrink. She took no notice of the wetness of the leaves and tall grass against her legs and arms, or the wind whipping against her cheeks; she heard the gurgling of a shallow creek and came to a sudden stop, the silence coming to an abrupt end at the sight of him, barely clothed and half his body resting in the cold water.

Any other boy would have been purple by that time, shivering, quite possibly barely even alive, but his cheeks were warm to the touch, and she wrapped her arms around his shoulders, resting her chin in the place where his neck and shoulder met, unwittingly remembering the sight of a small mouse nestled amongst the folds of the aging sheets in her attic; blissful in sleep, ignorant of the kitten at her young feet.

“Scott,” she whispered, but his eyes remained closed, almost as if they didn’t want to open; as if he didn’t want to have to wake up and face the reality of what he had done – accept the monstrousness that lived within him, unavoidable.

She ran a hand through his messy, damp hair and sighed; thought of her grandmother’s hand wrapped tightly around her own as they stood within the darkness of the void, and remembered the all-consuming nature of it – how out of control she had felt when she had been utterly wrapped up in it, but had made her way out, back into the attic – to her grandmother, a rainy evening, and an amusingly large mug of hot chocolate that had, she would later learn, been dosed with a light sleeping draught.

Her lips quirked upwards slightly at the memory, and she felt the cold air fill his lungs as he took a shaky breath and she sighed in relief, dropping her lips against the top of his head. A small, dry cough escaped from between his lips and she stood to face him, running her fingers lightly across the back of his neck. He had yet to open his eyes, but she knew it was only a matter of minutes before she would see it, the fear, the regret; but there would also be recognition there, and they would alight upon her, and _he would smile_.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from a poem by Jane Kenyon.


End file.
